The present invention relates to an information retrieving system, an information retrieving method, an information retrieving apparatus, an information retrieving program, an image recognizing apparatus, an image recognizing method, an image recognizing program, and a sales system that allow a user to retrieve his or her interested information and for example easily order a product according to the retrieved information.
It is assumed that a user found his or her interested product in advertisement of print media such as posters and magazines and advertisement of broadcast media such as commercials of television broadcasts and radio broadcasts. At this point, if the advertisement contains store information indicating a store that the user can buy the product, he or she can directly go to the store and buy the product at the store. In contrast, if the advertisement does not contain store information indicating a store that he or she can buy the product, he or she needs to estimate a store that he or she can buy the product and look for it.
In recent years, networks such as the Internet have been outspread. The user can easily search for detailed information about his or her desired product and store information indicating a store that he or she can buy product from a network. The user accesses a search site on the Internet with for example a personal computer and retrieves desired information with a keyword that he or she thinks that it indicates the product. If the retrieved information contains store information that indicates a store that he or she can buy the product, he or she can go to the store and buy the product at the store.
EC (Electronic Commerce) has emerged as the Internet has grown. Thus, the user can order his or her favorite product and pay the money for the product through the Internet according to the retrieved result from the information search site on the Internet without need to actually go to the store. As a result, the user can obtain his or her favorite product at home.
Moreover, in recent years, portable telephone terminals having an Internet connection function have been widespread. In addition, portable telephone terminals having a camera function (hereinafter sometimes referred to as portable camera telephone terminals) have been widespread. The user can easily photograph an object and transmit image data of the photographed object to the Internet. In the circumstance, a method of obtaining store information indicating a store that a user can buy his or her desired product according to image data that he or she photographed with a camera has been proposed in Japanese Patent Application Unexamined Publication No. 2003-122757.
In this method, the user photographs his or her desired product with a portable camera telephone terminal and transmits the photographed image to a server through the Internet. The server analyzes the received photographed image, obtains feature amount information, retrieves detailed information of the product, store location information of the product, and so forth from a database according to the obtained feature amount information, outputs them, and returns them to user's portable camera telephone terminal. Even if the user does not know the name of the product, he or she can obtain information necessary for ordering the product.
With respect to information retrieval for contents of a television broadcast and a radio broadcast that are on the air, a method of receiving a television broadcast with an Internet connection type television receiver and retrieving data transmitted through the Internet corresponding to the received television broadcast has been practically implemented for a digital BS broadcast and a terrestrial digital television broadcast.
For a regular television receiver, a system that uses a personal computer or a portable telephone terminal having an Internet communication function has been practically implemented. In this system, a user transmits time information indicating time at which his or her interested program or a commercial was on the air to a server through a network such as the Internet with the personal computer or the portable telephone terminal having the Internet communication function. The server side retrieves information from a prepared database that stores related information (program name, commercial information, performers, song names, artist names, and so forth) of broadcast contents at each time of each broadcasting station according to the received time information, and returns the retrieved result to the user.
In the method of which the user sees advertisement and goes to a store according to information in the advertisement and he or she retrieves his or her desired product from a search site on the Internet (hereinafter this method is referred to as the first method), in many cases, the user needs to remember information about a product as character information such as the name of the product. If the user does not know the character information, it is very difficult to obtain necessary information with which he or she can buy his or her desired product.
Now, it is assumed that the user saw a poster of a newly released movie and wanted to know a movie theater and show times at which it performs the movie. Conventionally, the user needs to memorize or take a note of character information such as the title of the movie on the poster and retrieve necessary information from an information search site according to the character information. In this case, if the user retrieves the necessary information according to information he or she memorizes, he or she may not retrieve the necessary information or may retrieve an improper result because he or she mistakenly memorizes character information or forgot them. If the user takes a note of the character information, he or she needs to take a time to prepare a writing tool and a notebook.
When the user found his or her favorite shoes that a person in advertisement of a magazine worn, if the user does not know the maker and the model of the shoes, he or she cannot obtain even character information as a keyword with which he or she retrieve information from the information search site.
When the user buys wine, he or she may not determine whether to buy it without necessary information about what taste the win has, where it was produced, and what grape species was used for the wine. If character information on the label of the wine bottle is written in for example French, it is difficult for a non-French-speaking user to input a keyword in an input field in the foregoing conventional retrieving method. Moreover, in the conventional method, it is difficult to satisfy needs of the user to quickly obtain information on the spot.
FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B show an example of a procedure of retrieving information and buying a product according to the first method. First, a user obtains information about a product from so-called push media such as paper media, a television broadcast, or a radio broadcast (at step S100). In this stage, the user is interested in the product in an “attractive” level. The user checks detailed information about the product such as the price and specifications with so-called pull media such as paper media e.g. an information magazine or an information search site on the Internet (at step S101).
When the user has obtained the detailed information about the product, he or she checks the information. If the user has obtained information about a plurality of stores for the product, he or she compares their prices (at step S102) and checks the location of the store that he or she can buy the product (at step S103). When the store is a real store, the user checks the location of the store on a map. If the store supports the EC and is a store as a web site on the Internet, the user checks the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the store. The user determines whether to actually buy the product according to his or her budget and the priority of the product in a product list (wish list) (at step S104). When the user has decided to buy the product, he or she performs the buying process for it (at step S105).
When the user buys a product according to the first method, he or she needs to retrieve information and make a decision at each step from S100 to S105. Thus, the method involves the user's effort. Further, since these steps are incontinuous and independent processes, it takes time to buy the product after the user finds an attractive product. Thus, before the user buys the product, he or she may be tired, which may discourage the user from buying the product. This means that the sales side may lose a business chance.
In contrast, in the method described in Japanese Patent Application Unexamined Publication No. 2003-122757, where the user photographs his or her desired product with the portable camera telephone terminal, transmits the photographed image to the server, and obtains product information, (hereinafter this method is referred to as the second method), there is a problem of which the user needs to actually photograph the product for example his or her acquaintance has the product and he or she can photograph it or a show window exhibits the product. Of course, an image of advertisement of paper media and a commercial of a television broadcast may be used. In this case, the product needs to appear independently or nearly independently. Thus, the second method also has many restrictions.
On the other hand, in the method using the network connection type television receiver (hereinafter this method is referred to as the third method), there is a problem of which a dedicated television receiver is required. In addition, since related information is broadcast using a data channel, when a recorded television broadcast is reproduced, a unit that records and reproduces the television broadcast needs to correspond to recording of the data channel. In addition, the user can retrieve only information that the broadcasting station has prepared. Moreover, since the related information is broadcast through the data channel, the related information that was recorded is not updated. Thus, when the recorded information is reproduced, it may become old and useless.
On the other hand, in the method of which while the user is seeing a television broadcast received by a regular television receiver, he or she transmits time information to a server using a personal computer or a portable telephone terminal and receives information from the server (this method is referred to as the fourth method), while he or she is accessing the server using the personal computer or the portable telephone terminal, the desired image may disappear. In addition, the user needs to register information about the broadcasting station that he or she sees to the server in advance. Thus, the user needs to take time. In addition, when the user wants to obtain related information from a reproduced image of a recorded broadcast, it is necessary to record information about the broadcasting station and broadcasting time of the image along with the image in advance. Thus, the user needs to prepare a special recording unit.
On the other hand, when the product related information retrieving and buying system is used through the Internet, for example the following services have been performed.
(1) A service of which a related information provider provides information to a pay user who retrieves the information.
(2) A business that publishes information that a particular company requests and gets compensation for an advertisement effect of the disclosed information from the particular company regardless of whether the disclosed information is concerned with related information that a user requests.
(3) A business that licenses a company to use a retrieving system and related databases and gains compensation from the licensee company.
(4) A business that introduces a user who has retrieved information and who wants to buy a product according to the retrieved information to a mail order company and gets a commission from the mail order company.
(5) A business of which a user who retrieves information sells a product to another user.
However, conventionally, there are many problems as described above. Thus, these services and businesses cannot be smoothly carried out. As a result, many companies and users lose their business chances.